Vlog

So your organisation works just fine. Your technical managers are gifted in what they do. Why would you want them to be more people centric? Or maybe YOU see the importance of people skills, but your employees don’t see the value. After all, they’ve been pushed to focus only on their expertise from an early … Continue reading Technical Guru to People Leader. How? →

In this week’s post I will share with you a case study of a typical persona we come across at The Engaging Executive. Someone with a brain the size of a planet, yet someone who suffered from analysis paralysis. Matthew was a very bright man. His challenge was he was not always able to articulate … Continue reading Case study: From Timid to Assertive →

At The Engaging Executive, we help HRDs, CEOs and COOs to develop their technical gurus into leaders of people. Last week I described the ENGAGE model. This week I will discuss who would benefit from learning it. The answer is simple…anyone with a ‘left brain’ bias. Often, but not always, those who are gifted with … Continue reading Who would benefit from learning the ENGAGE Model? →

Creating a people centric culture within your organisation is no easy task, particularly when you’re dealing with technical professionals. I’ve found that highly technical people often respond best to enhancing soft skills in a very methodical, systematic way. That’s where the ENGAGE model comes in.

You likely could rattle off a list of your strengths and weaknesses. After all, you’ve been asked this question in every job interview and likely know it by heart. You’re good at maths, budgets, analysis, project management, etc. Your development needs may be around people management, client communication and so on.

For some people, there’s nothing worse than those first five minutes of an interaction with a new person. What do you say? What do you do? Especially if you’re not in a business setting, where you at least have a business purpose in common, you can come up with a loss for words. You’ll never make a great impression that way!

One thing that’s driven into us from childhood is the mantra to “just be yourself.” Maybe this is why, when I’m teaching many of my clients new behaviours meant to help them along their path to becoming an Engaging Executive, they’ll stop and say, “I don’t know if this is right. This doesn’t feel very authentic.”

What are your thoughts on networking events? Do you hate them? Love them? If you’re the type who dreads networking events with a passion, and finds yourself not getting that much (if anything) out of them, my latest workshop could be for you.

Have you ever showed up late to a networking event and experienced that initial burst of panic? All of the sudden, you don’t have an upper hand. Everyone’s already paired off, talking in groups, and you’re the odd man or woman out.

Take a tip from my Amazon best-selling book, Engage (which you can find on my website). This simple technique is called “Two’s a Company, Three’s a Networking Opportunity.”

Need any easy way to take advantage of those dreaded networking events? Take this incredibly easy tip from my bestselling book, Engage.

Yes, I know, networking events, for some people, particularly if you’re introverted, can be detestable. You dread them. You try to get out of them in any way possible. However, like it or not, they’re useful to your career. So you go, suffer through a bit of awkward small talk and then leave, wondering how useful that wasted two hours of your life actually was.